Dear Mr. Davis,
 
In your article on April 14th you stated that the public's concern and accompanying monetary donations for the beaten and maimed puppy Buster outweigh donations for Ms. Clever because "In matters of public sympathy, Buster has a big advantage over Clever. She's only a person. Buster is a dog, a 10-month-old boxer mix".
 
It is not because she is "only" a person, but precisely because she IS a person, that the public can turn its efforts to trying to help Buster. As a concerned citizen and comedian, my life's work offstage is animal rescue. Along with that, I do at least a dozen benefits a year to raise money for battered women's and children's shelters, Planned Parenthood, medical care and family planning for rural and under-served women, Parkinson's Disease, AIDS, cancer, schools, etc. etc. It is in no small part that because cruelty and abuse towards animals indisputably leads to cruelty and abuse towards people, as proven in the Humane Society of the United States' conclusive "First Strike" study, everyone I meet in rescue is also dedicated to the betterment of human lives, and to that end, the passing and enforcement of felony animal cruelty laws. It is precisely because of those efforts, that any human being, like Ms. Clever, can freely walk into multiple agencies in every city in America and ask for and receive protection and help. She can get food, medical care, education, job training, drug counseling, parenting classes, rent vouchers, clothing, transportation, medicine, justice and above all, safe harbor. She has control over her future, and free will. Her children will be protected and cared for until their environment is safe. They will not be returned to her while drugs are present in her home. A society is judged by how it treats its weakest inhabitants. Your newspaper could better serve the community by asking why a beating which leaves a woman with a concussion and a broken nose and is called "aggravated domestic battery", is only a second-degree felony.
 
Buster, already clearly malnourished before being blinded and left for dead, will require the kind of constant care Ms. Clever may not be in a position to offer, yet the law gives him no choice but to be returned to her if he survives. Animals, of course, are totally dependent upon the mood, disposition, and will of humans. Little doubt they need help from people of other states when "Pasco-Pinellas State Attorney Bernie McCabe...still laughs about the irate letters he got years ago involving a man who regularly took his boa constrictor to a St. Petersburg park to feed the snake a Muscovy duck". The State Attorney laughs at the people's letters? The man entrusted with safety and justice really "...hasn't decided what to do with the case" where two hundred thousand malnourished birds had to be euthanized, even after receiving, by his own admission, "Heck, hundreds of letters about the case"? Hasn't decided what to do? Is he an elected official? And you wonder why people from everywhere feel the need to try and help?
 
How I wish you were correct when you quote that "animal cruelty cases are relatively rare". As my involvement with the Humane Society of the United States has unfortunately taught me, that couldn't be further from the truth. They are commonplace, beyond imagination, heinous, sickening, sad, and growing. Only with the passing and enforcing of strict felony cruelty laws protecting animals and people, and which are taken seriously by officials who allegedly serve and protect the public, will the climate of violence and non responsibility for one's actions change. So let me add my letter, too. I urge the newspapers and officials of your county, city, and state, to take seriously crimes against all helpless victims, to prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law, and to pass and enforce felony anti-cruelty measures.
 
Elayne Boosler
President, Tails of Joy (non-profit)

This article followed:

Man's bail increased in attack on girlfriend Series: POLICE REPORTS
St. Petersburg Times - St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright Times Publishing Co. Apr 19, 2002
 
Circuit Judge William Webb ordered bail set at $50,000 for [Barry Colbert] for the aggravated battery charge involving his girlfriend, who was airlifted to a St. Petersburg hospital with a broken nose and a concussion. The bail in the case was previously set at $1,000.
 
 
A judge on Thursday raised the bail for Barry Colbert of Moon Lake, charged last month with repeatedly punching his girlfriend and beating her dog with a hammer.
Circuit Judge William Webb ordered bail set at $50,000 for Colbert for the aggravated battery charge involving his girlfriend, who was airlifted to a St. Petersburg hospital with a broken nose and a concussion. The bail in the case was previously set at $1,000.
Colbert, 39, also is being held at the county jail on $10,000 bail on a felony animal cruelty charge involving the attack on Buster, a boxer mix still recovering from a broken jaw and a severe head wound. The dog lost an eye in the attack.
Colbert also faces charges related to a February incident in which authorities say he got drunk and let a 7-year-old boy drive his car.

Happy Endings!

Abused dog flies West to begin a better life:
 
After a celebrity takes up the cause, a boxer left for dead will have new reasons to live.
By CARY DAVIS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published May 23, 2002

Buster has entered the witness protection program.
He left town Wednesday in a cowboy hat and a handkerchief. The attire was appropriate for his journey: Buster is headed out West. But the costume served another purpose. The hat and the bandana hid the grotesque wounds Buster suffered in an attack in March. Buster is a year-old boxer mix. He was attacked with a claw hammer, authorities say, by Barry Colbert, the then-39-year-old boyfriend of Buster's former owner.
 
Buster lost an eye in the attack and is nearly blind in the remaining eye. He also suffered a deep gash on his forehead, and his jaw was shattered. After a two-month stay at Bayonet Point Animal Clinic, where he underwent a series of operations and became the darling of the staff and boxer lovers nat ionwide, Buster left town on an airplane Wednesday. "He's entered the boxer witness protection program," said famous standup comedian Elayne Boosler, who took a personal interest in Buster's plight. Boosler, who makes her home in Los Angeles, was instrumental in raising more than $5,000 to pay for Buster's medical bills and relocation costs. She donated $1,000 from a recent show in Sarasota and shelled out $269 for Buster's flight Wednesday aboard a Continental Airlines jetliner bound for an undisclosed location.
 
Buster's future home will remain a secret, Boosler said. "Colbert vowed to finish him off," she said.
 
She was referring to police reports that said Colbert never wanted Buster to be found. While in the Pasco County jail after deputies say he attacked his girlfriend, Colbert called a friend and asked him to bury the dog, authorities say.
 
A neighbor discovered Buster two days later, malnourished and barely alive. Boosler said Buster will spend the next few months with a nurse who specializes in helping blind dogs. A nationwide search to find a permanent home for Buster is under way. But the dog will never return to Florida, Boosler said.
 
Boosler, a noted animal activist, has helped to find homes for thousands of abused pets. Why did she take such a personal interest in Buster? "It takes some kind of soul and spirit for a dog to lay there for two days in 90-degree heat and refuse to die," she said. "He deserves a really nice home after something like that."
 
Plenty of others felt the same way. People from all over the country have sent donations to the Pet Aid Service Society of Port Richey to help Buster. Any money left over will help other abused Pasco pets, said Marj McConkey, president of PASS.
 
"Buster is more than just another animal abuse case," McConkey said. "This is about people uniting."
 
McConkey, Boosler and a local publicist have also been working to help Buster's former owner, Jacki Clever, find a job. Clever lost her job while recovering from injuries she suffered when, authorities say, Colbert beat her up.
 
"It's incredible that this dog led people to this woman," Boosler said. "She's an incredible woman and we've taken a great interest in her. It's really a wonderful story of triumph over tragedy."

Buster and his new brother Solly, in his Forever home.